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THE JOY OF LESS

Author:Hopely Li

Release on :2016-05-26

There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high
school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at
that point to 1)stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great
job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment on 2)Park Avenue,
enough time and money to take vacations in 3)Burma, 4)Morocco, 5)El Salvador.
But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met
there, 6)mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and
even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful
7)Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing
a 8)therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy
happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.

So—as post-1960s cliché 9)decreed—I left my comfortable job and
life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of 10)Kyoto. My
11)high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the
depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of 12)haiku I’d imagined
from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some
more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live 13)in the vicinity of
Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old 14)monastic 15)cell look
almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can
understand, no media—and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t
think of a single thing I lack.

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with
16)renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article
I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided
that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not
all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really
led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding
happiness). Not having a car gives me 17)volumes not to think or worry about
and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone
and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping pong every evening, to write
long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track
down old 18)baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring—once a week—I’m thrilled, as I never
was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in 19)Rockefeller Center. And
when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a
newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading
20)Walden, the crazily accelerating 21)roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle
has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much
where they started.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend my life to most people—and my
heart goes out to those who have recently 22)been condemned to a simplicity
they never needed or wanted. But I’m not sure how much outward details or
accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know
seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their
lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are
no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the 23)corporate world, I always
knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that I was
guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

I even went through a 24)dress-rehearsal for our enforced
25)austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some
years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an
all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere
Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to
read the new 26)John le Carré, while 27)nibbling at sweet 28)tangerines in the
sun. When a 29)Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights,
30)resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes
most freely when it isn’t pursued.